Open Negotiating

These days we depend on each other more and more. The importance of dividing natural resources and preserving the earth requests innovation and transformation. In daily business cooperation is critical for succes too. Human relationships can enable this transformation only based on a long term vision. Sharing each other’s knowledge, experience and creativity give impulses on the level of content. Trust and guts are required here.

How do I start making use of the opportunities that this era offers? Negotiating all too often is seen as a “zero-sum game”, a process of winning and losing. What one will lack, is the gain of the other. In other words: it’s about who’s got the power and in which way do I make sure that I’m the one who gets out of the battle the best? Open Negotiating is a method that enables people to attain more together than they each thought would be possible at first. This is achieved by looking into how each party can support the other in achieving his goals, by taking the relation seriously, also when tensions arise. Right in that kind of situation the most important thing is to get very clear what is important for both. After that the question is in what creative way all these interests can be served best.

Working together in this way creates space to change both the content of the negotiation and the relation between the parties at the same time, based on equality instead of survival of the fittest. Based on creativity that enables us to transform old content into new developments. By applying reasonableness when there’s something to distribute we build sustainable relations. Continuity only survives based on trust.

By spending three days looking into the dynamics in relations during negotiating and cooperating, the decision making process and creativity people are enabled to take some fundamental steps in the way they think about others and themselves and with that in their influence and impact in the world.